MP3.com is home to more than 1 million full-length songs from more than 250,000 artists. The majority of this music cannot be found anywhere else in the world. On December 2nd, Vivendi Universal — who acquired MP3.com — will shut it down permanently after selling the domain to CNET.
I started MP3.com 6 years ago in an extra room of my house. It grew into a global phenomenon. Formally unknown artists used MP3.com to gain massive fan-bases, generating millions of downloads and selling thousands of CDs. This initial rich catalog created a globally accepted standard.
MP3.com is a modern-day museum filled with digital antiquities. Unfortunately, Vivendi has not given Archive.org permission to capture the MP3.com site before it disappears. My hope is that those in charge at Vivendi will grant that permission before they dissolve. Otherwise we'll lose a major digital museum with no way to ever recover it.
Michael Robertson, Lindows.com
